Category: Women in Medicine
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Mary Josephine Hannan: portrait of a pioneer
Katie King Atlanta, Georgia, United States Mary Hannan. Photograph by Cowell, Simla. Via the Wellcome Collection. Public Domain. Mary Josephine Hannan was an Irish medical pioneer, an outspoken woman with a strong sense of morality, a fervid supporter of women’s rights, and a champion of children and public health. She spent her life fighting…
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The life of a trailblazer: Ogino Ginko, one of the first female doctors in Japan
Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States Photo of Ogino Ginko. From the National Diet Library. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Ogino Ginko was Japan’s first female doctor of Western medicine. She lived a life full of struggles, achieved a flash of fame, and then quietly retreated into history. She advocated for the rights, safety, and…
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Salernitan women
Vicent Rodilla Alicia López-Castellano Valencia, Spain Figure 1. A miniature from Avicenna’s Canon representing the Salernitan Medical School. Source The first medical school in the Western world is thought to be the Schola Medica Salernitana (Figure 1), which traces its origins to the dispensary of an early medieval monastery.1 The medical school at Salerno…
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and smallpox
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. A painting of Mary Wortley Montagu by Jonathan Richardson the Younger. Via Wikimedia. There are few examples of people with no medical training who independently make significant advances in medical practice. One such person was the elegant, aristocratic Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)—daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, first Duke…
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Mary Niles and the Canton rats
Edward McSweegan Kinston, Rhode Island, United States Doctor Mary West Niles, Wikipedia Bubonic plague arrived in Honolulu in December 1899. A month later it had spread to San Francisco, where the infection caused a series of deadly outbreaks until 1907.1 But for decades before plague reached the American west coast, it had burned through…
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Dr. Avery, Medicine Woman
Edward McSweegan Kingston, Rhode, Island, United States Doctor Alida C. Avery, Photo courtesy of Archives and Specials Collections/Vassar College Library. Source In July 1878, astronomers headed into the American West to observe a total eclipse of the sun. Among them was America’s only woman astronomer, Maria Mitchell of Vassar College, and four of her…
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What did Dorothy Reed See?
Sara NassarCairo, Egypt “They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.”1– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet Dorothy Mabel Reed Mendenhall opened the doors of medicine at a time when women were considered incapable of managing this “gory” field. Although Reed’s eponymous Reed-Sternberg cell was a pivotal discovery for the…
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Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake, first British woman doctor
Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake (1840-1912) was a rebellious child from the very start, “fresh, willful, and naughty.”1 She attended Queen’s College in London over the objection of her very conservative father, who upon graduation allowed her to take up a position as a mathematics tutor only if she did not take a salary (1859). After teaching…
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Mary Putnam Jacobi, advocate for women in society and medicine
Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906) was born in London to American parents. She spent her childhood and adolescence in New York, where she studied pharmacy before receiving her medical degree in Philadelphia in 1861. In 1866, after briefly working in Boston with Marie Zakrzewska,1 she went to Paris to further her medical training. Back in New…
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Lady Mary Wortley Montague: variolation against smallpox
Born in 1689, Lady Mary Wortley Montague was the most colorful Englishwoman of her time—an eccentric aristocrat, writer, and poet. In 1715 while still a young woman, her beauty was marred by a severe attack of smallpox. She had eloped in 1710 rather than accept an arranged marriage, and in 1715 her husband became British…